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Kya Sab English Hain?

So a video of Sarfaraz Ahmed has been going viral for the past two days where the poor guy can be seen right before a press conference, extremely nervous on seeing that all the reporters are native English speakers. It made me sad. I mean this was a time when he should have been rejoicing Pakistan’s victory, he should have been proud of himself for leading the team to semi finals just the way a captain he should. But here he was, all nervous as he would now be scrutinised for his proficiency in English rather than his skills as a cricketer.

And, man, was he right? He was unfortunately. People have been making fun of him and joking about how ‘paindu’ he is or how uneducated he is. First of all, let me clarify he is a highly educated individual. He has a bachelors degree in Engineering in Electronics. On top of that he memorised the Holy Quran and became a hafiz merely at the age of 10. This makes him more educated than most of the people commenting on the video. As for being paindu, he is far from it. He does not belong to a pind at all. He was born in Karachi and has always lived there so he can’t be categorised as a paindu.

Now coming to mindset of all the people pointing fingers at him. Please stop it. It only shows that we are still mentally slaves to the gora saab. His mother tongue is urdu and is very fluent and eloquent in it. Would you have called him a paindu if he was a Chinese and was struggling to speak English or perhaps a French or a German? No, I’m sure of that. Because they are proud of their mother tongue and they concentrate on building their nation and their athletes rather than trying to find faults in their conversational English fluency.

Next time when you see someone speaking in English with an accent or struggling with vocabulary, don’t judge them or mock them. English is not their first language and they are not claiming to be proficient in English anyway in the first place.

Finally, I have two suggestions for all pakistani cricketers:

Please ask for an interpreter for your press conferences and post match presentations. No one will make fun if you when you will speak impeccably in your own language. You can then concentrate on talking about what you want to talk about rather than concentrating on how to form sentences.

Please start learning conversational English. It will help you in lot more ways than you think. But the reason to learn must not be that people have been mocking you.